We purchased under a land loan with a 7 yr balloon at 5.95%; it is due 7/2025.

They really do stand out in a neighborhood plus I doubt you could get permits to build in a established area.Much easy to build on a larger plot of land in the boonies, which is where I see most of these.In the end, once you get them looking nice, you could have done a stick built house or even a log cabin if you can harvest materials on your land for about the same or less.

As an added bonus, doing all of this well can often land you on the "vendor list" of a company, putting your contact number as the first call to make when placing the next crew passing through.I apologize for the long-winded reply as you probably know and understand all of this, but there might be a reader that doesn't. 

I learned about their service in November of 2019 and signed up for their land trust setup back in January 2020.

We would like to sell them and use a 1031 exchange to purchase a larger tract of land that we expect to close on before the end of the year.   

Not only for the reasons you mention (easily manipulated, depending on format), but also have next to nothing to do with what your operations will look like.While I do agree that you should try to verify income, both through lease review, P&L, and if they will share: bank statements and tax filings, at the end of the day, I don't put a ton of value in seller financials, for many reasons.  

you can do a hard money style loan where its 50% down on the land and lender provides 100% of construction 

Purchase price: $180,000 Cash invested: $75,000 I purchased land near the ski resorts to build short-term rentals.

It cost us a lot of time and money to get it back in shape. 

Columbus has ranked on the top 10 markets that outline that for the past 6 months at least. the best place to buy new builds is in higher priceopint markets but where the costs haven't gotten out of control. besides that I'd recommend working with a vertically integrated land development, real estate development, and new construction firm or design build firm who also understands market conditions.